The Deflation of Tom Brady

The Wells report confirms the gleeful hope of Patriots detractors, and the sinking feeling of Tom Brady fans, in the days after the Deflategate scandal first broke.

Photograph by Brad Horrigan/Hartford Courant/TNS/Getty

More than three months after the country was engrossed in an N.F.L. scandal involving the New England Patriots and a bag full of allegedly underinflated footballs, America gets to experience the thrills of Deflategate all over again. On Wednesday, the league released the investigation report by Ted Wells, of the law firm Paul, Weiss. It concludes, in careful language, that "it is more probable than not that New England Patriots personnel participated in violations of the Playing Rules and were involved in a deliberate effort to circumvent the rules." In simpler terms, it confirms the gleeful hope of Patriots detractors, and the sinking feeling of fans, in the days after news of the scandal first broke: they probably did ... something.

Specifically, the report points to three individuals within the Patriots organization who were—again, more probably than not—connected to the intentional deflation of footballs to pressure levels below their legal limit before the A.F.C. championship game against the Indianapolis Colts. The first two you've likely never heard of: Jim McNally, a part-time officials' locker room attendant, and John Jastremski, an equipment assistant. The third guy, however, is Tom Brady, the Patriots quarterback. You might recall that before he led the Patriots to the Super Bowl title, Brady held a rather tortured press conference during which he repeatedly denied having anything to do with the scandal. “I have no knowledge of anything," he said in January. “I would never do anything outside of the rules of play. I would never have anyone do something.” But the Wells report suggests that Brady was “at least generally aware of the inappropriate activities of McNally and Jastremski involving the release of air from Patriots game balls.” (The investigation found no evidence that head coach Bill Belichick, or any other member of the organization, was involved.) N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell said, in a statement, that the league was considering “possible disciplinary action.”

So, what is more probable than not to have happened? According to the report, prior to the start of the A.F.C. championship game, Jim McNally delivered the Patriots footballs to the referees for inspection. After the balls were confirmed to be at or above the minimum level of 12.5 p.s.i., McNally is alleged to have taken the balls from the referees’ locker room to a bathroom stall, where he remained for a total of one minute and forty seconds. (There is video evidence of him going in and out.) After leaving the bathroom, McNally took the balls to the field, where they were used by the Patriots during the first half of the game. After league officials were tipped off by the suspicious Colts, New England’s footballs were tested during halftime, and eleven were found to be below the legal limit. Referees reinflated the balls before the start of the second half, in which the Patriots proceeded to trounce the Colts, 45-7.

If McNally was doing the dirty work, then it seems that Jastremski, the equipment manager, was the brains behind the operation. The report includes text messages sent between McNally and Jastremski over the course of the past year. The two men discuss Brady's preferences for the inflation level of footballs, and his dissatisfaction in a particular case of overinflation; McNally specifically requests Jastremski’s help in obtaining signed memorabilia from Tom Brady. (In January, Brady gave McNally two autographed footballs.) In one exchange, sent before the season, McNally refers to himself as “the deflator” and says “Chill buddy im just fuckin with you ....im not going to espn........yet.” Before a game against the Bears in October, Jastremski mentions getting McNally a “needle,” which the investigators presume to be what McNally could use to quickly and secretly and illegally deflate the balls. Both men dispute this interpretation, and lawyers for the Patriots, the report notes, argued that these texts are simply examples of hyperbole and attempts at humor.

The investigation found no direct evidence that Brady spoke to either Jastremski or McNally specifically about deflating footballs before the A.F.C. championship game, or that he discussed the situation afterward. It does note that after the Deflategate scandal broke, Brady spoke to Jastremski on the telephone for the first time in six months, and that Brady sent Jastremski a series of texts, including “You good Jonny boy?” and “You didn't do anything wrong bud.” (These came from Jastremski's phone, as Brady did not make his cell-phone records available to investigators.) Brady also told investigators that he did not know McNally’s name or what he did for the team, which is something that Jastremski disputed in an interview and seems contradicted by the text-message conversations between Jastremski and McNally. After news of the potential tampering broke, Belichick is said to have asked Brady directly whether “Brady or anyone Brady knew had tampered with or in any way altered the footballs.” According to Belichick, Brady told him, “Absolutely not.”

The careful legal language of the findings, and the contradicting stories of the central characters, are sure to leave some readers unsatisfied, but there is plenty for all types of football fans to sink their teeth into within the two-hundred-and-forty-three-page report. Linguists, gossip hounds, and Jets fans will enjoy parsing the text messages sent between Jastremski and McNally, which include such choice phrases as "Tom sucks...im going make that next ball a fuckin balloon" and "Fuck tom....make sure the pump is attached to the needle.....fuckin watermelons coming." Science buffs can linger in an entire section dedicated to an explanation of Ideal Gas Law and the expert testimony of Daniel R. Marlow, a professor of physics at Princeton. And gearheads can read about, and debate, just how much time it might take a person to deflate twelve footballs with a pump needle in a bathroom stall.

But for the rest of us? Cell-phone records, video surveillance, Princeton physicists, two hundred and forty-three pages? What exactly was the point of all of this? Even in the most heated days of the national Deflategate obsession, nearly everyone agreed that Tom Brady could have been throwing shot putts and still beat the Colts. Former players who weren't busy expressing outrage were coming forward to point out the many ways in which footballs have been tweaked over the years by quarterbacks to suit their preferences or to gain an advantage. If the N.F.L. was so serious about the integrity of its footballs, then why did it allow each team to supply its own?

This report, despite its headline findings, has enough ambiguity in it to leave all factions satisfied. Diehard New England fans will continue to defend the Pats to the end. Most everyone else was already convinced that they were cheaters, whether, like true Pats haters, they were calling for blood or else, being cynics, they simply shrugged: “They want to win real bad. So, sometimes you do stuff that’s not fair, so that you can win,” the comedian Louis C.K. told David Letterman. “I think it's hilarious. I mean, why not? It's a stupid football game.”

Tom Brady was already made to look ridiculous, in January, standing at a podium in a winter hat answering questions about balls. Now it looks as if, rather than simply being clueless, he was slippery and evasive. On Wednesday, Brady's father defended him, telling USA Today, “This was Framegate right from the beginning.” The report, meanwhile, supported its findings by noting that “a contrary conclusion requires the acceptance of an implausible number of communications and events as benign coincidences.” Brady may or may not face discipline from his league, his coach, and his team this offseason. Either way, he will face his most frenzied public reckoning yet.

Ian Crouch is a contributing writer and producer for newyorker.com. He lives in Maine.